1. Field
Embodiments of the present invention relate to an electronic parking brake which is installed in a vehicle and is operated by a motor.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, a brake installed in a vehicle serves to decelerate or stop a vehicle during driving or to maintain the stopped state of the vehicle, and changes kinetic energy into heat energy by means of a mechanical friction device during driving and thus performs braking operation.
Brakes are generally divided into a drum brake and a disc brake, and perform braking operation using hydraulic pressure.
Hereinafter, a drum brake will be described. The conventional drum brake includes a drum rotating together with a wheel of a vehicle, and first and second brake shoes installed within the drum and braking the drum through friction with the inner surface of the drum. Further, an actuating lever pushing both brake shoes to the inner surface of the drum when a parking cable connected to a parking lever of a driver's seat is pulled is provided in the drum. That is, in the conventional parking brake, since the parking cable is pulled by operation of the parking lever to apply pressure to the brake shoes, the brake shoes move in the braking direction to generate braking force.
However, such a conventional manual type parking brake may cause problems, such as inconvenience in that a driver needs to pull the parking lever by proper force, increase in the number of parts, such as an equalizer and a cable fixing device to install the parking cable, increase in man-hours for assembly, and lowering of utilization of an indoor space of a vehicle due to installation of the parking lever.
In order to solve these drawbacks of the manual type parking brake, an electronic parking brake which is automatically operated using a motor has been proposed. That is, Korean Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2000-0044704 discloses an electronic parking brake, and various research and development to achieve improvement of utilization of a space for installation of such a brake, the compact structure of the brake, and improvement of operating performance of the brake have been carried out.